Growing
up on the raised skirtsof that immodest city of Angels,on warm summer nightswe played hide and seek in the yard until late,or looked down from the foothillsand watched the wide delicate skein of city lightsshimmer Pasadena and Hollywood --when the dark ridge above our neighborhood,would suddenly wake in that high-pitched howlyodelling agony, yipping in pain."Coyotes" my brother's whisper explained,"they're hungry, watch out!“He would, of course, then run awayand I would listen, alone under the cameliasto those voices that could straina note to its edgelong before I heard John Coltrane

Tone, flung away up there, high,opening a space in the dark crystal skyfloating A flat, bending the note slowlike a tweaked key on a brass sax, alto,then dropping doppler-like into pianissimo,two bars rest, who made that line?a calling together, a welcome to jam,wait there!another does that Blue Rhapsody leadsliding up the spine on a clarinet reed,far away there,cool jazz, moving slowrepertory only
the body knows,like a pulse, like death, like a longing for love,he croons, fine tunes the yawlp, the great aaoooo!

That was
long ago. Nowa friend, more dear to me than principleswears on her arms and backthe sandy blond hides of eighteen coyotes.I sharpen a joke but smile,avoid
the nerve. We chalk it upto quaint old values, the old fightto save the odd species,we ironize on leather boots.I do not howl, my voice is gonethat might have howled,lacking courage, for I too ammore scavenger than predator, word-varmint,snuffling through old carcasses of imageryand
trash piles of rhythms and rhymes. I retreatfrom any snarling critique.

Last summer, back in the place of my youth,I saw that the dark ridge had grown fullnew houses with Roman porticosand Tudor towers with commanding viewsand big price tags,had grown full of lights,shining bright behind a silhouette of silence.